Nevermore: Eleanor Oliphant, Lost City, Shadow Man, Lost City of the Monkey God, Inferno

To start, Nevermore dived into Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, a debut novel by Gail Honeyman.  Eleanor Oliphant is not your average heroine.  Serious, socially awkward, and painfully odd, Eleanor tries to avoid any kind of social interaction or hiccup that might disturb her carefully orchestrated life.  That is, until she meets Raymond, the IT guy from her office, and subsequently saves Sammy, an elderly gentleman who took a spill on the sidewalk.  Now, Eleanor has to wonder if her isolated life has been worth it—and if opening her heart to someone else might be a risk worth taking.  Our reader called Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine an intensely emotional and incredibly moving novel.  “[I found it] so beautiful how her friendships help her survive” the worst parts of her life, she said.  She highly recommended Honeyman’s debut, saying it was well worth reading.

Next, Nevermore checked out The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston.  In 2012, Doug Preston joined a team of scientists on a quest to rediscover this incredible, lost city.  Called the “White City” by the conquistadors and legendary among indigenous people, the Lost City of the Monkey God held an undiscovered trove of treasures and history.  Using LIDAR to help them chart a course, Preston and the rest of the team set off into the Honduran rain forest.  They were astonished by the discoveries they made and the dangers they faced—and brought home.  Our reader loved The Lost City of the Monkey God.  She said it offered an astonishing depth of knowledge on the history of the region, as well as detailed some of the more extreme dangers the scientific team faced.  It was truthful of the hardships and it shed light on the various plights, pitfalls, and problems with which archaeologists deal.

In Shadow Man, Detective Ben Wade has returned to Rancho Santa Elena in search of a quieter life.  Filled with peaceful streets, quaint communities, and excellent schools, Rancho Santa Elena is the perfect place for Ben to take a break and rebuild his crumbling marriage—until a daring serial killer arrives on the scene.  Now, Ben and forensic specialist Natasha Betencourt must stay one step ahead of a killer, before he chooses his next victim.  Thrilling and thought provoking, Shadow Man is a fascinating detective story on how personal secrets can quickly wreak havoc and destroy lives.  Our reader gave high praise for Alan Drew’s novel, saying he enjoyed it immensely; however, he also noted he’s ready for a change of pace:  “[I’ve come] to realize…I’ve read too many mystery books in a row.”  He’s ready for his next book to be of a scientific variety.

Nevermore jumped back in time with Jane Austen’s classic, Persuasion.  Published in 1818, Persuasion tells the story of Anne Elliot.  When she was only nineteen, Anne fell in love with Captain Wentworth; however, with neither fortune nor title to his name, she was forced to break her engagement with him and warned never to see him again.  Seven years later, Anne reconnects with beloved captain—now, a wealthy and accomplished Navy man—and she begins to wonder if second chances really do happen, or if she’s pinning too many hopes on a fond memory.  Our reader admitted she enjoyed reading Persuasion more than she expected.  She thought it was a sweet, romantic story that offered an unexpectedly astute view on class, wealth, and privilege.  It was a nice change of pace for our reader, even if she wondered how women could possibly be content with being entertained and wooed all the time.  “It seems [very] boring,” she noted.

Last, Nevermore jumped into Inferno:  A Doctor’s Ebola Story by Dr. Steven Hatch.  Hatch, an infectious disease specialist, fired worked in Liberia during 2013 at a hospital in Monrovia.  Within six months, several physicians were dead and Ebola was quickly growing into an international crisis.  Hatch also helped create the Ebola Treatment Unit with the International Medical Corps, trying to stop the spread of this horrific disease—and temper the xenophobic politics that stemmed from this crisis.  Inferno is an uncompromising look at Liberia’s violent history and the virus that nearly destroyed it.  Our reader called Hatch’s book “absolutely fascinating.  [It was] very informative and very well written.”  She added that it was very interesting to see how the history of Liberia factored into the spread of the Ebola epidemic and how doctors were able to track the virus, going into such great detail as to hypothesize on the victim of the very first Ebola infection.

Nevermore: Mingo County, Ebola, The Reader, Almost Sisters, Catching the Wind

Reported by Kristin

Our first reader took on a social history of a poor Appalachian community:  They’ll Cut Off Your Project: A Mingo County Chronicle by Huey Perry.  When President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a “war on poverty” in the 1960’s, Perry was a young history teacher recruited to the Mingo County Economic Opportunity Commission project in southern West Virginia.  Our reader was intrigued by the local history, although wondered at how much infighting happened over the allocation of resources.

The same reader turned next to Inferno: A Doctor’s Ebola Story by Steven Hatch, MD.  When the Liberian ebola epidemic began in 2014, Hatch knew that he had to go help.  After he arrived, it took him a while to figure out how to help in the middle of such desperation.  More of a memoir, Hatch writes about many of the people he met and treated in Liberia.  When he returned to the United States, he found that the ebola epidemic was a political football and people were quarantined over the fear of transmitting the disease.

Our next reader was inspired by The Reader by Bernhard Schlink to ask the question: “How do you take the past and go forward, when the history was so horrible?”  In postwar Germany, fifteen year old Michael falls into an affair with an older woman.  When he goes to university, he is assigned to watch a Nazi war criminal trial, where to finds to his horror that his lover Hanna is being tried.  Readers discussed Germany’s past, as well as the Confederate experience of the southern United States, and how they both affect the present.

Next was The Almost Sisters, by Joshilyn Jackson, a favorite author of our reader.  Leah Birch Briggs is a graphic novel artist who is blindsided by a call home to Alabama to help Birchie, her grandmother who has suddenly shown signs of dementia—unfortunately in full view of half the town in church one Sunday morning.  As Leah attempts handle her own changing circumstances as well as care for her grandmother, old bones and racial differences in the Deep South emerge in a way that will change her life and the lives of her family forever.

Catching the Wind by Melanie Dobson was another postwar novel enjoyed by a reader.  Daniel Knight and his younger sister Brigitte escaped when their parents were arrested by Gestapo agents, but were then separated from each other when they reached safety in England.  Seventy years later, Daniel hopes to reunite with his sister.  Our reader found this to be an interesting book, but said that in the end everything was tied up in such a neat package that it didn’t seem very realistic.